Tag archives: Louie Giglio

by
Peter Sprigg

January 15, 2013

Pastor Louie Giglio of Atlanta’s Passion City Church was forced to withdraw from giving the benediction at President Obama’s inauguration, despite his outstanding record in mobilizing the church to fight the evils of modern slavery and human trafficking. All it took to bounce him from the program, however, was for homosexual activists to attack him for having given a sermon in which he declared that homosexuality is a sin—two decades ago.

None of the comments from Pastor Giglio that I have seen quoted are at all out of the mainstream of historic Christian orthodoxy or of contemporary evangelical thought. If he’s to be excluded, then you are excluding virtually all evangelicals, Bible-believing Christians, or Roman Catholics who believe in the teaching of their church.

What many people do not understand is that when a conservative says “homosexuality is a sin,” it is a reference to their chosen sexual behavior, not to their inherent human dignity. Christian theology teaches that all people, including those with same-sex attractions, are created in the image of God, but it also teaches that all people—liberal or conservative, homosexual or heterosexual—are sinners who can be saved only by the grace of God.

A poll taken just last September (2012) showed that 52% of Americans believe that “sex between two adults of the same gender” is “morally wrong,” and only 42% say it is “morally acceptable.” So the viewpoint that is being used to blacklist a distinguished Christian leader is not only a common view; it remains the majority view, not just of evangelicals, but of all Americans.

Although Giglio himself dodged the controversy by voluntarily withdrawing from the inaugural ceremony, a spokesman, Addie Whisenant, took pains to distance the inaugural committee from Giglio’s views anyway, declaring, “As we now work to select someone to deliver the benediction, we will ensure their beliefs reflect this administration’s vision of inclusion and acceptance for all Americans.”

We are increasingly seeing this—exclusion in the name of “inclusion,” rejection in the name of “acceptance,” intolerance in the name of “tolerance,” and forced uniformity in the name of “diversity.” It’s contradictory, it’s oxymoronic, it’s downright Orwellian—and yet, unbelievably, people make these statements with a straight face.